Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Taking care of your soul”
Our Bible verse for today: “You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, whose thoughts are fixed on you! Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.” Isaiah 26:3-4 (NLT)
Our thought for today: “Staying focused on God helps to keep our soul at peace”
If we allow them to, the problems and stresses of life can rob us of God’s peace. When the issues of life are pressing in upon us it’s a natural response to give them our attention, but that’s not necessarily bad. In fact, if we ignore real problems we’ll be in denial about them and they will probably just get worse. So I’m not suggesting that we pretend they don’t exist. It’s when we dwell on the problems, and when we look to ourselves and to others for the resolution instead of to God, that’s when we surrender the peaceful state of our soul and we become unsettled and distraught.
I think of that scene in Matthew 14:22-31 where Jesus comes to the disciples walking on the water, and Peter, once he gets over his fear of seeing Jesus walking on water, asks Jesus to make it possible for him to walk on the water too. So Jesus commands Peter to get out of the boat and come to Him. Peter does and sure enough, he walks on the water too. Until he takes his eyes off of Jesus. As soon as Peter’s attention shifted off of Jesus and onto the wind and the waves he started to sink, and Jesus had to reach out and save him. Peter was fine as long as his focus was on Jesus. It was when he shifted his focus to the problems that everything fell apart for him.
The writer of Hebrews exhorts us: “Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith.” Hebrews 12:2 (HCSB).
Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, not on the problem – that’s what Isaiah meant in 26:3-4. Pray, recite key verses of scripture over and over again, meditate as you visualize God handling your problems for you, and then pray some more. Staying focused on God instead of on our problems will go a long way towards keeping the soul at peace.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 